You are right, Perl should incorporate that even more so because it already exists in the 'dreaded snake' ;-) language:
(straight from the doc)

>>> # Measure some strings:
... a = ['cat', 'window', 'defenestrate']
>>> for x in a:
...     print x, len(x)
... 
cat 3
window 6
defenestrate 12
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